Heart failure sends one million people to the hospital every year and even with precautionary measures, many of these patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. Researchers have developed a system of sensors that may predict heart failure to prepare patients in advance for treatment.

Developed by international research teams and lead by John Boehmer, MD, professor of medicine, Penn State College of Medicine, the sensors create an implantable monitoring system, called HeartLogic, that is able to measure heart rate, breathing and electric activity.

"This is a new and clinically valuable measure of worsening heart failure, and it combines a number of measures of the physiology and heart failure, much like a doctor will look at a patient," said Boehmer, a cardiologist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. "Doctors look at all their signs and symptoms, get some tests and put it all together and make a decision about how well or ill the patient is. HeartLogic does it similarly. It integrates a number of measurements of what's going on with the patient, including breathing, activity and heart sounds, and puts that all together to give us an index that we believe is both sensitive and specific for heart failure."

The study focused on 900 individuals with heart failure over the course of one year. HeartLogic was able to detect 70 percent of heart failure in patients. Such detections came an average of one month before the event actually occurred—results greatly surpassed the researchers' expectation of 40 percent detection.

"It's like having high blood sugar, if you're managing diabetes," Boehmer explained. "The doctor doesn't need to know about every high blood sugar and every high blood sugar doesn't result in a hospitalization. But you want to treat it before it gets very high and the patient becomes so symptomatic they become ill and end up in the hospital. This is the same concept."